List Building - Relationship building

Well it was just an idea Tony. I am not into Email Marketing myself. But not a bad idea also. The one you just shared with me. It may reduce the potential of me, if ever I will, or you being marked as a spammer. Good call Tony.

In my experience, to keep that relationship going, you have to constantly do 3 things: Introduction, Induction, and Indoctrination.

You have to continually re-introduce yourself to them personally, through detail and storytelling, you have to make yourself REAL to them so that there is a "who" to go with the "what" in your emails.

Induction is how you bring the reader into YOUR inner circle, and hopefully they let you into theirs. You do this by making yourself a part of their world. You comment on the things the see or will see as part of the niche. You talk about the conclusions and feelings they have and that expressed similarity will draw them to you.

Then, when they know who you are and are paying attention, you Indoctrinate them - which is just a fancy way of saying "teaching" but in stealth mode. Indoctrination is teaching that they will just accept without question. In the case of marketing, this involves teaching people in detail about the PROBLEMS with the niche.

You want them to learn and accept that all the problems exist and they are terrible and they are feeling them almost every time they even think about the subject. This is so when you have a solution to offer, you never have to sell very hard, because of COURSE they want it - they believe in the problem it solves already.

Skip all that. Browse this forum. Join a few other IM forums and browse those too. Start writing down the same questions you see over and over. Collect answers for those questions. Turn them into reports or a mini-course. Remember what I said about focusing on the problems. You can even teach them free solutions, too. But don't forget to focus on the problems with those, too.

Once a week at the most, but you can email twice a week and have a really responsive, active audience. 2 or 3 to one content vs. offers are a good bet, but you don't have to get religious about it.

If you're doing the above, people won't even really notice a difference between an offer email and a helpful email, because they're all helpful.

Yeah, it doesn't make a difference, as long as you don't lie about your experience. Newbies can guide other newbies. The IM marketplace is actually a really good one to learn in, because there is a desperation in some customers, and a fandom in others. There are a lot of strata and price points to play with, and a never-ending supply of products to sell.

I say the opposite - don't hide your affiliate links. Technically, it's illegal for you not to disclose that they are, in fact affiliate links. The quantity balance seems right, but if you want good results it can't just be "content, content, content, offer" - they have to be connected.

So instead, use something like "3 problems, free imperfect solutions, 3 more problems, offer a paid solution that solves all problems, including flaws in free solutions".

Actually, this IS the method to use if you want big numbers with a terrible response rate. It makes people start ignoring you. If you have a constant influx of new subscribers, this is fine - but you have to beat the unsub and dropoff rates or you'll eat your own list away.

I prefer personally to have a small, loyal, responsive list. If you build a list around indoctrinating the problems and educating about the solutions, your list won't mind being sold to because they won't even notice it happening.

Yeah, send often. The trick is to send stuff that's so good on the regular, that they will SAVE your emails to read later. Then, send SLIGHTLY too much for the average person to keep up with. Trust me on this. Keeping them tilted, but not overwhelmed, is a great position to have them in.

One final piece of advice - have a blog where you post your content to as well. It can be the same content most of the time. Then, any time you send an email that's NOT an offer, end it by asking a question whose answer requires both information contained in the content AND from inside the prospect themselves.

Then have a strong CTA to go leave an answer in the comments on your blog. An example question would be if the email was about 3 problems in the niche, your question might be - "Have you ever experienced X,Y, or Z yourself? How do you think this kept you from blah blah blah - let us know on the comments!"

Something like that - what this does is make them MORE LIKELY to digest and internalize the content (which is good, because we're trying to indoctrinate those problems). It does this by connecting our content fresh in their minds with older personal memory structures. Once they're connected, those ideas are in there good.

Second, the CTA in every email CONDITIONS the reader over time that there is ALWAYS something to click - and that most often, clicking = self-expression time. This is subtle, but when you make an offer, they click, and the only way to self-express on an offer page is to buy. They will be conditioned to comply, and they will want to buy and not even know why.

Third, when people go over to your site and see the comments and see that your list is a CONVERSATION, they will be drawn even more deeply in and under your influence. When you put the influence you already have on display for others, it amplifies it.

Anyways, that's enough for now. Hope that helps!